


Mysterious Fathoms Below

by BluWacky



Category: Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluWacky/pseuds/BluWacky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Royal Scientific Lecture, year unknown.  Dr Charles Milo Thatch, on "Regnum Sub Maris - The Kingdom Beneath The Waves"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mysterious Fathoms Below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [genarti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/gifts).



**  
_From the Royal Scientific Lecture, year unknown_   
**

**  
_Dr Charles Milo Thatch, on “Regnum Sub Maris –The Kingdom Beneath The Waves”_   
**

_Merpeople are unfortunate in that their lives are governed by twin conflicting principles – fish and folk.  Being subject to the rules of two animal kingdoms is a concept that many find difficult, if you will excuse the pun, to fathom.  We had co-existed for countless years with the merfolk with little interaction on either side, little knowledge of each other’s ways of life.  Of course, thanks to this monarchy’s extensive and generous programme of research investment and the establishment of the world-renowned Athena Institute, together with the co-operation of the Atlantica Department of Geology, I am delighted to be able to present to you the following lecture to hopefully give you an illuminating glimpse into a world you have never seen – the Kingdom Beneath The Waves._

~

Queen Athena was wrapped in a sheet of glimmering golden cloth, illuminated by the magic of her widower’s trident.  Her elegant red hair rippled around her face, masking it from view;  her wounds had been cleaned post-mortem and the fragments of the ship that had struck her had been removed and destroyed, and she seemed from a distance to be serene and peaceful.

The people of Atlantica had thronged to her funeral, as befitting their beloved queen.  Due to the ban on music that had recently been enshrined into law, the only sound was that of the mourners – the keening cries of whales and dolphins, the sombre wails of the subjects of the kingdom, all echoed through the waters in sorrow.  Ambassadors from Ys and Kumari Kandam were present on behalf of their nations, having travelled for weeks to reach Atlantican waters; they too joined the crowds on the ocean floor, leaving the other creatures of the sea to float around the funeral site.

This was the first funeral Princess Ariel had ever been to.  She was six years old.

“Daddy?” she said, tugging on her father’s beard.  “Why is Mommy tied down like that?”

The Queen’s body rested on the sands below, leashed by magical bonds coiled around sturdy coral formations.  The royal family watched proceedings from the golden castle of Atlantica; they had already had the chance to pay respect in private.

King Triton, sole remaining monarch of the Kingdom of Atlantica, sighed deeply.  He had no reserves left for crying.  “Do you remember what your mother taught you about the sea, my Ariel?”

“What comes from the sea returns to the sea.” his daughter recited.  Her elder siblings were mostly inconsolable, but Ariel herself was more curious than sad.  She understood that her mother was gone, but that only opened up more questions.

“That’s right.”  Triton touched his daughter’s shoulder.  “When the time comes, your mother will give back what she has taken from the ocean.  But, for just a short while, we will let her float freely, so she can enjoy the waters one last time.”

“I think she’d like that, Daddy.”  Ariel smiled up at her father.  “Will you let her go up to the land again?  She really liked it up there.”

“No.” Her father’s voice boomed about her, and Ariel shrunk back a little.  “They will harm her no more.”

“I don’t think they meant to do anything wrong, Daddy.  I don’t think that boat saw her.  It was very big, after all.  Does a boat have eyes, Daddy?  They don’t look like us.”

King Triton stared down at his daughter, but she was no longer looking at him and was watching the crowds disperse in the distance.  She didn’t see the look of rage and grief on his face.

Ariel watched out for her mother every day after that as the body rose up in the water, buoyed by the currents, its golden shroud billowing and expanding about her.  It wasn’t long before it sunk slowly back down again.  Once her magical bindings were dissolved it was hard to know where the body of Queen Athena lay, until soon there was no body to be seen at all.

~

 _  
Note: the following passage was deleted from Dr Thatch’s lecture as given due to it being deemed inappropriate for such an occasion.  His notes are reprinted here in the interests of full academic disclosure.   
_

_As is all too clear from recent events, death among the merpeople is treated with the same reverence and sorrow as among human kind.  Birth, however, is a decidedly different kettle of fish.  [pause for laughter].  I do apologise.  It will of course be obvious to you all that a half-human, half-fish anatomy will give rise to a conflict of biological processes, and the merfolk reproductive cycle is no different in this regard._

 _Although merfolk are basically monogamous by nature and their relationships share much with those of humankind, reproduction is a much more distant affair.  Eggs are laid and then fertilised outside the body; many of the larvae that eventually hatch are unlikely to survive and may in fact be eaten by their siblings in the struggle to find food.  Given the volume of eggs fertilised, however, it is likely that several of the larvae will survive until they grow large enough to be treated as human babies, with an attendant need for more varied sustenance than plankton.  This brutal upbringing is accepted as a way of life among the merfolk, and would go some way to explaining the overall physical perfection of their race – only the strongest survive from a very early age._

 _~_

The days were growing shorter and the waters colder.  The anglerfish colonies in the depths of Atlantican waters aided cultivation of the bioluminescent bacteria that blossomed in patches around the walls of the palace, providing small patches of light in the wintery gloom.  The ocean seemed sluggish and tired, and many fish and merfolk would choose to relocate to more southern climes for the cold season just to grab a few more hours of filtered sunlight.

Ariel and her family, however, remained in Atlantica.  There had once been trips to other kingdoms, to other waters, but not this season; there were too many boats on the surface and so the royal family had to remain vigilant.  Distorted booms and cracks ebbed like doleful cries down to the ocean floor suggesting some kind of conflict; King Triton, his beard greyer by the day, had authorised patrols to check for any threatening debris from the war above, and Ariel would often watch the small parties of mermen and women heading out in tight formation to check for sunken ships – or people.

The merfolk did not especially feel the cold, but the atmosphere in the palace was chilly nonetheless.  Even the best efforts of Sebastian, seemingly called upon to provide any services the royal family required, did not seem to be helping, as he raced up to her in a corridor as she swam towards the room she shared with her sisters.

“Ariel!” he cried, a look of hope upon his face.  “I have just finished composing a wonderful melody for you to sing at the Gala next week!  I have called it ‘Aria in Sea Minor’!  I do think that of all your sisters you should be the one to sing it, I am sure your father would be delighted!”

“Not now, Sebastian.  I don’t have time.  Things to do, places to swim, people to see.”  Ariel clearly did not want to be disturbed.  She waved her tail in a shooing motion.  “See you later!”

“Ariel, wait!” The crab swam manically after her.  “Where are you going?  Your father has forbidden anyone to leave the palace until this ocean commotion is finished!”

Bang! A massive cracking noise sent shockwaves through the palace, shaking the walls and sending Sebastian flying.  Through a window he could see a great yellow and orange light rippled high above on the surface of the ocean, seeming to blossom outward briefly like an anemone rippling in the currents.

“Ariel!” he shouted.  “Ariel! Where are you? Are you alright?”

In the commotion Sebastian didn’t have time to keep track of all of the Daughters of Triton.  He didn’t have a chance to see that Ariel had darted out of the castle while no–one was looking to take a look at what had happened.  He didn’t see her dart amongst the falling timbers and cascading bodies from the ship above them to take a look at what she could find, and it would be some years before he eventually discovered the underground grotto that housed her collection of human odds-and-ends that began that day with a single fork.

~

 _Any discussion of the merfolk must of course bring the element of magic into question.  Ladies and gentlemen, I could understand any scepticism on your behalf, but from the events of this kingdom’s relatively recent past it is clear that there are forces in the world that mere science is not capable of grasping.  That is not to say that our research cannot dovetail with the more mystic nature of the merfolk.  We have been able to establish, for instance, that there are certain areas of the merfolk brain that appear to be more highly developed than those of we landdwellers – perhaps future generations will be able to tell us for certain but we believe this may account for the exemplary communication abilities of the merfolk, able to speak many languages and even converse with creatures of different species.  The merfolk bone structure, curiously, is several times stronger than that of humans, requiring great effort to even saw through in our research, which we believe aids survival in the high pressures exhibited at lower sea depths._

 _Alas, there are some mysteries we cannot even begin to fathom, and nor can the merfolk themselves.  Although the merfolk are far from culturally unsophisticated, their history and mythology is curiously lacking in any explanation of how they came to exist or how they are able to breathe water without gills, for instance.  The oft repeated mantra “what comes from the sea, returns to the sea” appears to be the central tenet of their worldview.  This is a scientific lecture, not a philosophical treatise, but it is not a view to which I would personally adhere._

 _~_

The noise woke King Eric, as it often did.  It was no less terrifying and heart breaking after so many times.

His wife lay next to him, sound asleep, completely unaware of how her breath came in ragged gasps as if she were trying to gulp in so much air in one go.  Her hands clawed at her throat, and she thrashed her legs about as if trying to escape from some horrible confinement.

The night terrors had only begun a matter of months previously, but they were the latest in a line of odd symptoms.  Several years had passed since Ariel first became human without incident – she had spent much of her time studying to relearn much of what she thought she knew about life on land (why, Eric had wondered, had she trusted a _seagull_?  Although he’d never met Scuttle, the local seagulls were irritating enough at the best of times without attempting to explain the intricacies of cutlery etiquette as well).

The first sign something was wrong was when Ariel began to suffer from terrible insomnia during the night.  She began to sleep more during the day, particularly in the summer months, although she could give no reason for why she suddenly felt more comfortable doing this.  As far as he was able Eric had re-arranged her lessons and any important functions for the early evening so he could still spend time with her, but it had not been easy.

The insomnia passed, but then came a change in Ariel’s appetite.  She did not lose her taste – rather she became almost totally indiscriminate, eating anything that was presented to her – including, to Eric’s horror, fish that was accidentally presented to her.  She seemed to express no great regret about this – “What comes from the sea returns to the sea” she’d say – but the seeming callousness bothered Eric.

The night terrors were new, though.  Ariel herself was completely unaware of them, and her personality was essentially unchanged – she was still the same slightly off-kilter, intensely curious woman that he had married all those years ago.  She was quiet with most people; she told Eric she was self-conscious about how her voice sounded above water, something to do with everything sounding faster (Ariel was the scientific one, not Eric), but she was no less beautiful to him than the day he had first heard her on the shore.

All this made it even harder to watch her now.  The night terror would pass, and she would sink back into uninterrupted sleep.  However, it was clear to Eric that, despite all appearances, Ariel would never be truly comfortable as a human being.

The realisation of this was more than he could bear.

~

 _I hope I have managed to educate you as far as I am able as to some of the more interesting customs, practices and physical abilities of our neighbours in the Kingdom Beneath The Waves, helping to dispel some of the myths that surround the life both enigmatic and aquatic._

 _I fear I must close this lecture on a sombre note with my final thanks to Queen Ariel, without whom we would not only have been unaware of Atlantica in the first place but also much of the data I have presented could not have been collated or examined.  As per her final wishes we have learnt an enormous amount from the autopsy process, and I must again thank the new Atlantican President for dispelling what remained of the late King’s enchantments to aid in our research._

 _Queen Ariel, alongside our dear beloved King Eric, has now returned to the sea.  One day perhaps we will be able to visit the commemorative grotto and museum that Atlantica has constructed in their honour – but for now, the Kingdom Under The Waves remains as inaccessible, if at least slightly more comprehendable, as ever._


End file.
